7 years ago, our family of 7 moved to a small home on the prairie. Our goals were lofty - to live frugally, become more self reliant, grow as much of our food as we could (sourcing the rest locally), and in general, learn to live in a more sustainable way. In an exciting twist of life events, we recently moved "home" to the coast and are adapting our lives and goals to a completely different climate and landscape. Join us as we continue on our journey!

Tuesday, 12 January 2016

The days are crisp and cold but all is bright (I do love the brightness of an Alberta winter). Snow reflecting the sun's rays and clear blue skies make a cold prairie winter (just) bearable....

Chilly days call for plenty of warming and soup is the very best way to do just that. There's nothing quite like a hot bowl of homemade goodness to nourish and warm you right to the core. On Saturday, to satisfy a craving, I made Italian Wedding Soup which (in my family's opinion) is the perfect combination of light and hearty. I used an adapted version of this recipe.

Into my stock pot of homemade chicken broth went the sweated veggies. They simmered while I made meatballs from local pastured pork (in Great Grandma Amy's mixing bowl).

Fresh parsley, grated parmesan cheese, bread crumbs, and egg and seasoning made these little morsels so tasty... Make lots because you can never have enough meatballs in the soup! My family actually fights over them and rations them out - it's ridiculous really, but someday I'll look back on it and laugh....

As the meatballs baked, I added some broken up whole wheat spaghetti noodles to the broth (which were cooked to doneness just as the meatballs came out of the oven). Into the soup pot they went with some chopped fresh spinach. By this point, the tantalizing aromas brought the family (and 2 of our children's friends) from far and wide.... Having just pulled a loaf of sourdough out of the oven it was all too much to bear and nobody could wait for supper to eat so we ate at 4:30 in the afternoon! Would you believe I have no picture if the finished soup or the bread? I blame that on having a horde of hungry mouths to feed in that moment. LOLTo note - THIS is the sourdough loaf I'm crushing on at the moment. It's so good and so easy - I make it every day using fresh ground Gold Forest Grain's Einkorn wheat berries.

Saturday, 9 January 2016

In 2016, I want to dig deeper. Simply stated, I want to leave a smaller footprint. Permaculture ethics provide a tremendously rich resource to guide living with this intention and I find myself constantly using those ethics to guide me as I make changes in our home and in our lives. One such change is how we clothe our family. I've always bought clothing and household items at thrift stores to save money but I've never looked seriously at the clothing industry as a whole.

We've been watching documentaries with our children to learn more about the clothing and fashion industry. For some time wehave avoided buying new, imported clothes knowing that they were made by women and children in terrible working conditions, but until we realized the entire story behind the industry, it was impossible to truly grasp the magnitude of the situation. Fast fashion is a huge global human rights issue and an environmental problem of epic proportion.

Over the last few decades, we've seen the clothing manufacturing industry nearly totally disappear from North America. Clothing labels now seek manufacturing services in countries where garments can be made very cheaply (and often without regard for the health and safety of the people making them). As fashion (and consumption) has sped up (with "looks", colours and styles rapidly changing) people have taken up shopping as a pastime to keep up with trends. Consumption is at an all time high and our homes and closets are burgeoning as a result! Are you old enough to remember when closets were much smaller? In newer homes today, master closets are ROOMS with cabinetry and opulent finishing... literally, shrines to consumption and the fast fashion industry.

The word "decluttering" didn't exist in mainstream conversations a short time ago... Closet "purging" wasn't on the radar because none of us had the number of garments we have now. Excess abounds in today's culture. Growing up, I had ONE pair of good leather shoes for everyday wear, a pair of boots and leather sandals for summer. I recall owning 2 or 3 dresses, 2 pair of pants, 2 pair of shorts and a few shirts at any one time. That's it! All of it was good quality and it lasted the whole year (or until I needed the next size up). There was nothing to declutter from my closet (or my Mother's) because we wore everything on a regular basis. Clothing shopping was not recreational and it certainly didn't happen frequently. In fact, my Mother took me only twice a year to the department store to get what I needed (undergarments, socks, shoes or perhaps a winter coat or another needed item). Shopping was done as a pre-planned homemaking task not as a recreational pastime (as it is today).

From what I know through acquaintances and my daughters' friends, recreational shopping happens (at least) on a weekly basis in a great many people's lives. This makes our generation literal slaves to fast fashion and consumption! This pattern of shopping and discarding (because of changing styles or dissatisfaction with cheap clothes that don't wear or wash well) fuels the demand for yet MORE clothes (perpetuating the problem).

Retail stores are FULL of garments that perform poorly (fabric shrinkage, fabric pilling, twisting seams, buttons barely attached, flimsy zippers that break, etc) because they are made from inferior quality materials. These clothing items are often thrown out after just a few wearings which has created a HUGE problem of synthetic clothes in landfills (synthetic fabrics or "blends" do NOT biodegrade). The ever popular micro fleece is a terrible polluter as those very fine plastic fibres (which shed with each washing) ultimately end up in our lakes and oceans (and believe it or not, in fish!).Fast fashion comes at a tremendous cost to the environment. This must stop and the place to tackle the issue is in our homes.

We have in recent years looked to buy clothing made in North America to remove our support from the "fashion industry", reduce the "travel miles" on our clothes and purchase better quality clothing but we are now taking this issue deeper to heart... With permaculture ethics as our guide (once again), we look to waste streams in our community to fill our clothing needs. We live in a fairly affluent area of Alberta so a huge amount of second hand clothing is on offer in several thrift stores near me. Much of it is in new or nearly new condition and often, I find quality garments made to last from wool, linen and cotton. As an example, just yesterday, this is what I found:

Six 100% cotton t-shirts and one 100% linen blouse all very good quality, in BRAND NEW or nearly new condition (some with original tags!) for just $9.00 in total. If I had to purchase these items new from a retail store, the cost would total well over $250.00.

Purchasing clothing in this way keeps discarded clothing out of landfills (and it certainly helps our budget), but most importantly, it keeps our money (and therefore our support) out of the fast fashion industry. We likely can't meet all of our needs in this way, but we can certainly be mindful consumers and look for ethically produced garments to fill any wardrobe gaps. Those ethically purchased items will be more costly than cheap imports, but the money saved on the bulk of our (used) purchases should balance this out.